


All the Time in the World

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Vagrant Story
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 00:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: “Sydney is a master of the Dark. Pitch is the nightmare king. Who would submit to who?”So this prompt was for a crossover with Vagrant Story–which turned out to be the main challenge. The last video game I played was Mario Kart, and I was at a party at the time. I had never heard of Vagrant Story before, but helpfully, Wikipedia, the Final Fantasy wiki, and youtube exist. This ended up being gen and also kind of meta–which might turn out to be how I address the prompts I know I’m going to face in the future that ask for crossovers with things I’m not familiar with.





	All the Time in the World

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 4/25/2013.

The outer reaches of the Nightmare Realms are unknown even to Pitch. In fact, it is categorically impossible for them to be fully known or mapped. Even Pitch’s knowledge of them makes them less nightmarish, and his walking through causes them to change and grow in reaction to the invasion. Today, he is walking on chill, damp stones he has never seen before, and never will see—here, the darkness is so dense even his eyes are defeated. The air is cold, and so still it gives no hints as to which direction might be followed to find larger chambers.

Pitch wonders, without caring too much, how long it will take him to find his way back to the globe at the center of the Realm. He has all the time in the world. He has all the time in any world. 

As he wanders further and further away from the center—at least, as he thinks he does—the texture of the stones under his feet changes. The stones are neither rougher nor smoother than before, but there is something different in their grain. The temperature of the air changes by a few degrees. Something light and soft brushes against his face and hands, something that he knows is not a cobweb. 

_So, the Nightmare Realms have invaded another world._

There is still no light, but a faint smell of decay lets Pitch know that he is now within catacombs. He pauses for a moment to breathe and listen and attempt to understand where he is. Knowing will not damage this place.

A faint click of metal against stone comes to his ears, getting closer all the while. After a minute or two, Pitch can tell that whatever was causing the clicking is standing in front of him. He stands still, prepared to wait for the conscious entity to make the first move. He can’t sense the fears of whatever it is very well—it doesn’t seem fully human.

“Who’s there?” It—he—asks. Pitch smiles, wanting to let the silence stretch out. But the voice speaks again, too soon. “Don’t answer. You can’t. You don’t know yourself.”

“I don’t care if I do,” Pitch lies.

“Of course you do,” says the voice, “You don’t have a future—what can you claim except for the past? And you don’t have a past.”

“Everyone has a past,” Pitch retorts.

“And some have more than one. Think, Pitch. Who are you? Who were you?”

Reluctantly, yet seemingly unable to resist the inquiry of the man in the dark, Pitch casts his mind back. He has thousands upon thousands of memories, and most of them contradict each other. Memories of crime, of love, of history upon Earth and off the Earth. Some were stronger once, but everything has become muddled now.

“What a mess,” says the voice, and the metallic clinking returns. Its rhythm sounds like fingers drumming against the wall. “Were you stabbed in the heart or not? Did you kill your daughter or not? Do you even have a daughter? Are you human? Did you ever love the Sandman? Do you love Jack?”

A long pause. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh?” There’s a smirk in the voice.

“No.” Another pause. “No,” Pitch says, and this time he believes it. “I don’t need a past. If I was a human, I am more than that now. I am immortal. I am a concept. I am fear itself. I belong to humanity,” he grins in the dark, “and they shall have me. Farewell, whoever you are. May you get exactly what you deserve.”

“What a salutation,” Pitch hears the voice murmur, almost admiringly. The echoes die off instantly as he crosses back over the boundary.

Unerringly, he makes his way back towards the globe and the center. The voice said he doesn’t have a future, and the voice proved he didn’t have a past. But he must have one of the two, and so he will—slowly, slowly—claim a future. After all, he has all the time in the world.


End file.
